again one descends to the large and prosperous village of the foothills
and its railway terminus, where lowland and highland meet. East or west,
each mountain valley has its analogous terminal and initial village,
upon its fertile fan-shaped slope, and with its corresponding minor
market; while, central to the broad agricultural strath with its slow
meandering river, stands the prosperous market town, the road and
railway junction upon which all the various glen-villages converge. A
day's march further down, and at the convergence of several such
valleys, stands the larger county-town--in the region before me as I
write, one of added importance, since not only well nigh central to
Scotland, but as the tidal limit of a till lately navigable river.
Finally, at the mouth of its estuary, rises the smoke of a great
manufacturing city, a central world-market in its way. Such a river
system is, as geographer after geographer has pointed out, the essential
unit for the student of cities and civilisations. Hence this simple
geographical method of treatment must here be pled for as fundamental to
any really orderly and comparative treatment of our subject. By
descending from source to sea we follow the development of civilisation
from its simple origins to its complex resultants; nor can any element
of this be omitted. Were we to begin with the peasant hamlet as our
initial unit, and forget the hinterlands of pasture, forest, and chase
(an error to which the writer on cities is naturally prone), the
anthropologist would soon remind us that in forgetting the hunter, we
had omitted the essential germ of active militarism, and hence very
largely of aristocratic rule. Similarly, [Page: 106] in ignoring the
pastoral life, we should be losing sight of a main fount of spiritual
power, and this not only as regards the historic religions, but all
later culture elements also, from the poetic to the educational. In
short, then, it takes the whole region to make the city. As the river
carries down contributions from its whole course, so each complex